


The Charm

by misslonelyhearts



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/F, Gen, Sparring, clone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-02
Updated: 2013-04-02
Packaged: 2017-12-07 05:37:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/744881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misslonelyhearts/pseuds/misslonelyhearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>for my gorgeous, talented friend Charlotte i will always be grateful. she helped give shape to Two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Charm

“You never ask about One,” says Two, less like the question it could be.   
  
Miranda’s more than a number, greater than a link in the sequence, even bent double over her own knee with a voice bearing down on her like the promise of a few good years. Or a lot of bad ones.  Two sounds every molecule as old as she is.   
  
Getting to her feet, Miranda shakes it off.   
  
“Should I?” She kicks low, then high, following Two’s backward steps. “I know what happened. It’s written all over your face.”  
  
Yes a number, and not the last, but also more than the sum of her attributes. Those she earned edging out the ones that were given. It keeps her coming here, where Illium reflects the worthiest parts of itself and cares enough to hide the rest. The mat beneath her feet is torn, and so is the shadow opposite her in the gym. They share a dozen more punches and short kicks, silent except for the whistle of cloth and flesh. Two recovers, waits, fingers flexing while the air circulation turns on, teasing the short-cropped hair Miranda would never choose.  
  
“Same as what happened to Five,” she says, finally, metal alloy digits readjusting her glove. “In the event you hadn’t heard.”  
  
“But not to you or I,” replies Miranda. Two throws her fists in agreement, limitless as a pair of ground-based launchers, and Miranda swerves.  They maneuver in the tight space, neither flaring blue for more than a second, and she remembers what it’s like to count on reserves that aren’t there.  
  
“Not yet.” Two wipes her chin.  
  
Miranda stretches and rolls her shoulders, absently sure of what will be written on her face. And that Shepard will be its author.  
  
Two gives her a nod. “Let’s go again, princess. Come on.”  
  
They spar. Two’s prosthetic is lethal at range, more an extension of her patchwork life than a consolation for what’s lost, and Miranda dodges it with a careful eye. The arm is alien but it suits her.  When it connects, Miranda catches it and pulls, fingers learning Two’s synthetic sinews.  
  
“Like it?” she asks, “It’s no billion-credit reboot but it has its perks.”  
  
“Unmodified turian weapons, quarian tech. Geth specs,” says Miranda, not-asking in the same way. She wonders if this is what it’s like to resent being compared to one’s mother.  
  
“Precisely,” Two says. She spins, the sweep of her spurred elbow slashing the air beside Miranda’s ear where she flinches away.  
  
“Does it interfere with your biotics?”  
  
“You tell me.” Two demonstrates how little Miranda knows, what hasn’t sunk in, about true adaptation. In this small space, the shockwave can’t be dodged, only survived. It flaps the mat, sending Miranda on her ass, skidding against the far wall.  
  
“Impressive,” Miranda says, breath so small and tight in her lungs, Two’s leg between her thighs, mismatched palms yanking her upright.  When she reaches under the back of her track jacket, fingertips slipping around her pistol grip, the colder of Two’s hands finds her throat.  
  
“The difference between you and me, Three,” she says, a snag in her lip that’s half snarl and all scar, “Is you think you need that thing.  And I know you don’t.”  
  
Miranda blooms blue, the hard heel of her hand pressed between Two’s breasts, and she pushes her biotics from somewhere deep that the amp doesn’t touch.  Two sails backwards, her big boots slapping the mat, and she rolls to a crouch millimeters before hitting the observation window. They breathe.  Miranda leaves the pistol locked against her back.  
  
“You’re right.” She cracks her knuckles. “I’d enjoy it if I were you.”  
  
When Two comes at her it’s out loud. It’s a mercenary battle cry and a prisoner’s lament. It’s a horror on broken vocal chords and it’s exercised rage. Rage allowed. Miranda throws a barrier, underused and unpracticed, and Two punches through with her prosthetic, stripping the oily snap of its shields along the armature. And not yielding. Beyond the barrier, Two grins at her.  
  
“Reach for it,” says Two, teeth squeaking on the grind.  “Go on.”  
  
“Not this time,” Miranda replies, because it’s not the gun she wants but more of Two’s face up close. The poorly-healed ghost of Lawsons past, and a future knotted with scar tissue.  She’s imperfect and pure.  
  
Miranda would like to try kissing her.  A sloppy strategy, perhaps, for a combatant like no other.  
  
Instead, she drops the barrier and pivots, letting Two’s momentum take her down to the mat, and Miranda follows. Warp stifles Two’s attempts to buck her. It’s hard to dominate, to pretend to know what she’d been standing for, and kneel over someone wearing a version of her face. Someone who’s never doubted where her loyalties landed: in herself and no one else.  
  
Two’s ribs expand between Miranda’s knees where they squeeze, where she can’t pull enough air.  Curiosity shapes her to boldness, and Miranda explores Two’s alien arm openly, testing for sensitivity where there isn’t any, and then finding it. Two’s eyes flare.  
  
“Nice play,” she huffs, “I think we’re done.”  
  
.  
  
She doesn’t understand why Two hasn’t showered.  
  
Sitting at her encrypted comm., Miranda can still feel the fresh patter of water, the back of her neck still damp and warm, the day’s secret detour washed away. Her hair smells like Thessian rosewater.   
  
But across the channel her predecessor and her legacy lounges heavily in a swivel chair, stripped to a sports bra with the top of her sweaty leggings rolled down.    
  
“I’d call it a kind offer, but we both know it isn’t,” says Two, hooking a leg over the armrest.  
  
“No, it’s a selfish one,” replies Miranda.  She watches the color of Two’s sweat shifting in the light of her apartment, somewhere private and lost, gold to white to red over the plane of her stomach. “I’m not surprised that you’d decline.”  
  
“Disappointed?” Two asks, head dropping to the side.  
  
“Lately, yes.”  Miranda smoothes her hands down her legs, rubs her neck, struggling to bring herself to sign off.  Two takes up the silence, filling it bodily, and Miranda stares at the juncture of her shoulder where the prosthetic emerges, down to the shadowy curve of tech embedded in her side.  
  
“I like a fight I can win,” she says, voice darker than Miranda’s will ever be. “Call me when you do, too.”  
  
“I’ll hold you to that,” says Miranda, mirroring Two’s smile and feeling older by leagues.  There are privileges she can mark the absence of, snaking through the other woman like poison.  A lesser person couldn’t pull it off.    
  
“And…” Two goes on, leaning close to the comm. so Miranda can see the wet, gray hair curling flat against her temples. “Take care of Four.”  
  
Numbers …out of order, and out of time.    
  
“That’s something you’ll never have to say,” Miranda replies, crushing down the shiver threatening her spine. “But thank you.”  
  
Her hotel room is still bright when Two blips off, and Miranda gives her unsteady fingers three minutes to calm their tremor before tapping the comm. to dial again.


End file.
